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Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Fantasia and Fugue on 'Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam' January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN Liszt’s fascination with Bach’s organ works was closely tied to three organists: Johann Gottlob Töpfer, municipal organist in Weimar; Alexander Winterberger, who was to premiere the massive “As nos” Fantasy and Fugue; and Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, who became the Weimar court organist. Töpfer was the teacher of both Winterberger and Gottschalg, but he was best known as an influential organ builder, and Liszt particularly admired his novel ideas on registration in the midst of most German organists’ conservative style. Liszt spent considerable time visiting church organs across Thuringia with Gottschalg and coached the younger man on playing Bach. Gottschalg published an account of these coachings, revealing that Liszt was puzzled by his playing of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor with the full organ on one manual as was the German custom at the time. Surely Bach would never have done so with three manuals at his disposal, opined Liszt, and when Gottschalg played the work with new registration for Töpfer, his teacher said, “You should always play it like that.” Gottschalg also reported on Liszt’s shortcomings as an organist, saying he never became fluent with the foot pedals and even tried to initiate a notation system of stems up for the right foot and stems down for the left. However, even though Gottschalg himself found it practical it didn’t catch on in Germany. Of Liszt’s original organ works, his first, the epic Fantasy and Fugue on “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” (Come to us, to the waves of salvation) is considered his finest. Liszt composed it in 1850 based on the chorale sung by three Anabaptists in the first act of Meyerbeer’s opera Le prophète . Though it was commonly held that Meyerbeer had based the chorale on a traditional Jewish melody he had heard in his uncle’s synagogue, Meyerbeer confided to Liszt that he had made it up. Liszt dedicated the dedicated the Fantasy and Fugue to Meyerbeer, who wrote to Liszt that he was honored and pleased, though he mistakenly thought it was written for piano. Five years later the twenty-one year old Winterberger premiered the several-times-revised version of the gigantic work for the inauguration of the new four-manual organ at the Merseburg Cathedral. As Liszt’s Toccata and Fugue on B-A-C-H was not ready, he had asked Winterberger to perform the “Ad nos” Fantasy instead, which had been published in 1852. Liszt traveled several times to Merseburg to help Winterberger prepare, in particular as to its complex registral colors. The Fantasy states the Meyerbeer chorale theme, which Liszt masterfully transforms and manipulates into two grand climaxes. He then introduces the chorale theme in a hushed Adagio in F-sharp major, the key he considered divine. The final virtuosic Fugue employs a subject based on the chorale, and elements of the previous sections return in recapitulatory fashion, to which Liszt adds a triumphal full-organ coda. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 65 January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN One of the most accomplished organists of his day, Mendelssohn had begun studying organ at the age of eleven with August Wilhelm Bach (not a descendent of J. S. Bach). This was in addition to his lessons in piano, violin, drawing, painting, Latin and Greek (and other languages), music theory, and general studies, as well as gymnastics, swimming, horseback riding, dancing, and chess—all of which showed his prodigious talents. A few of Mendelssohn’s great organ highlights include improvising on the St. Paul’s Cathedral organ when he was in London in 1833 to premiere his Italian Symphony and in 1837 completing his three organ Preludes and Fugues, op. 37. He performed organ works by Bach at the Birmingham Festival, when he also premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 and conducted a performance of his oratorio St. Paul . Then in 1840 he gave a challenging concert of Bach’s organ works at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig to raise funds for a new Bach monument. He also began drafting the pieces that would become the six Organ Sonatas, op 65. He completed the first in F minor on December 28, 1844, and the other five by January 1845. Mendelssohn wrote to the publisher Coventry that he considered these sonatas a “kind of Organ-school” and to Breitkopf & Härtel that they represented his personal way of handling the organ. They are all very representative of his adoration of Bach in their use of chorales and fugues. At the same time, in their varied movements, they show Mendelssohn’s interest in contemporary styles of writing, such as song and Lieder ohne Worte (songs without words), while eschewing the usual sonata forms and also refecting his penchant for improvisation. Sonata No. 1 unfolds in four innovative movements—the first full of contrasts including an exordium for full organ, a fugato over organ pedal point, the calm introduction of the chorale Was mein Gott will, das ich g’scheh allzeit alternating with strains of a fugue, the fugue in mirror inversion, the mirror combined with the original, and finally a return to the chorale. The unusual form may have been inspired by a recitative in the same key in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (No. 25), in which Jesus’ agitated utterances alternate with a chorale. The second movement sounds like a song without words, the third like a recitative, and the fourth a fantasia-like movement with virtuosic toccata elements that may have arisen in Mendelssohn’s imaginative improvisations at the organ. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Arioso from Cantata, BWV 156 December 5, 2021: Paul Jacobs, organ Bach was especially fond of this justly famous slow movement. He used it as the opening Sinfonia of his Cantata 156: “Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe,” scored for oboe, strings, and continuo, which was first performed in Leipzig on January 23, 1729. Then around 1738 he used it again as the slow movement of his Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056. Both, however, are thought to be reworkings of the slow movement of an earlier oboe concerto in G minor that is now lost (though scholars have reconstructed it). This exquisite Sinfonia, also known as “Arioso,” presents a favorite Vivaldi slow-movement texture—a singing melody over pizzicato accompaniment, though not a repeating bass pattern as both Vivaldi and Bach often employed. The melody, whether for oboe or right hand of the keyboard part, provides a perfect example of Bach’s ornamentation technique. His embellishments, simple at first and more extensive when the opening section returns, complement the melodic line without disrupting it. The present version for organ was arranged by American organist Diane Bish, who is also known for her television series The Joy of Music. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

César Franck (1822-1890) Prelude, Fugue, and Variation, Op. 18 January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN As organist at St. Clothilde and professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory, Franck influenced a generation of organists and composers including d’Indy, Chausson, Duparc, and Vierne. As a composer Franck was a late achiever par excellence: his three memorable chamber works—the Piano Quintet, the Violin Sonata, and the String Quartet—were composed in the last decade of his life, and his only Symphony was completed when he was sixty-five. There is no telling what he might have achieved had he not died in 1890 at age sixty-seven. At St. Clothilde, which boasted one of Cavallé-Coll’s finest organs, Franck naturally provided service music, but it was his after-service improvising that drew crowds and led to his Six pièces , composed between 1856 and 1864. His friend Liszt was so impressed that he declared them deserving of a “place beside the masterpieces of Bach.” Franck dedicated the third of these, Prélude, fugue et variation , composed between 1860 and 1862, to fellow organist Camille Saint-Saëns. The classically oriented Prelude and Fugue may show a kinship with his colleague’s style, though in no way represents a portrait. The tender, slightly melancholy Prelude consists of three iterations of an irregular five-measure phrase. Another short “prelude” that sounds extemporized launches the Fugue, after which the Variation presents a new version of the opening Prelude with a more active accompaniment. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

Charles Ives (1874-1954) Variations on "America" January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN Charles Ives was an eighteen-year-old organ virtuoso when he composed his celebrated variations for organ on the patriotic hymn “America.” He would not enter Yale until two years later, and his primary musical influence was his bandmaster father George. When he first performed the Variations on “America” on February 17, 1892, at the Methodist church in Brewster, New York, he was still improvising parts of it, as he recalled, and his father had something to say about what he could and could not include. Apparently the piece sometimes contained an interlude of canons (exact or close imitation as one part overlaps another) in three different keys, which George had ruled out because it “made the boys laugh out loud.” Furthermore, he had forbidden the polonaise (a Polish-style dance in 3/4 time) on account of the conflict he perceived between a European form and an American tune. (He later reinstated it as Variation 4.) As with many of Ives’s works, the Variations on “America” were not published until long after they were composed, in this case 1949, but the piece was one of his first to become widely known and played. As it stands, the work features an introduction, a theme, Variations 1 and 2, an interlude, Variations 3 and 4, a second interlude, Variation 5, and a coda. Influences of pieces Ives studied around the time of composition certainly play a role—particularly those by John Knowles Paine, Dudley Buck, and Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck—but the work also manifests Ives’s great streak of originality. In the variations themselves he constantly fragments, reorders, and recomposes his source tune in quite sophisticated ways. Further, the interludes, which were added around 1909–10, show the bold use of two keys at once—F major and D-flat major in the first and A-flat major and F major in the second. Many casual listeners have supposed Ives to be poking fun at the patriotic main theme, whereas those more familiar with his sense of humor have suspected him rather of mocking the more stodgy variation forms of his time. His sense of humor is certainly evident, but he was most likely earnest in showing his mastery of the variation form and of his given instrument. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Song Without Words in D for cello and piano September 29, 2024: Rafael Figueroa, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Beginning in September 1829 and continuing throughout his life, Mendelssohn composed eight sets of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without words), a genre he originated, principally for piano, which blurred the boundary between song and character piece. The term first appeared in letters to his sister Fanny and in print in 1833. He composed eight sets of six pieces each: opp. 9b, 30, 38, 53, 62, and 67 were published during his lifetime, and opp. 85 and 102 appeared posthumously. Fortunately for cellists, he also wrote a Song Without Words for cello and piano, op. 109. Penned around October 1845, this gem was published posthumously in 1868. Mostly lyrical, some virtuosic, these short pieces exemplify the Romantic thought that music could express something words could not. Though they are written in the manner derived from solo song, Mendelssohn left most of them untitled except for a handful—Venetian Gondola Song, Duetto, and Folk Song—leaving the listener free to imagine what poetry might have inspired them. The Songs Without Words generally—as in this case—contain a lyrical melody over a figural accompaniment pattern. Though the figuration usually stays the same throughout the piece, the central section often modulates or contains a new melodic idea creating an A-B-A form. Here new piano figuration swirls tempestuously around a turbulent new cello melody. A pensive transition brings a return of the calm A section and an ethereal conclusion. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

GEORGE WALKER (1922-2018) Lyric for Strings December 16, 2018: Emerson Quartet George Walker’s long life consisted of a string of outstanding achievements. After graduating from Oberlin College as a piano and organ student, he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music—composition with Rosario Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber, and piano with Rudolf Serkin—and became the school’s first African-American graduate. He was also the first black instrumentalist to give a recital, his debut, at New York’s Town Hall and to appear as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He toured Europe under the auspices of National Concert Artists—their first African-American instrumentalist—then began teaching before beginning his doctoral studies at Eastman. Awarded Fulbright and John Hay Whitney fellowships (the Whitney’s first composer recipient), Walker studied in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger. Walker taught at the Dalcroze School of Music, the New School for Social Research, Smith College (first black tenure recipient), University of Colorado, Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and University of Delaware. His longest professorship, however, was at Rutgers University (1969–92), where he chaired the music department. Composing remained an equally important facet of Walker’s career, evidenced by over ninety published works to his credit, ranging from orchestral pieces and chamber music to choral works, songs, and piano pieces. Highlighting Walker’s remarkable list of awards and honors is the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Music—he was the first African-American composer so honored—for his Lilacs for voice and orchestra, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Walker also received commissions from myriad other organizations, such as the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kennedy Center. As recently as 2013 Walker was still having works premiered—his Movements for Cello and Orchestra that November with the Sinfonia da Camera led by Ian Hobson at the University of Illinois and his Bleu for Violin Unaccompanied at the Library of Congress the previous April. In 2012 the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra premiered his Sinfonia No. 4, “Strands,” a joint commission with the Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and National symphonies. That May he gave the commencement address at the Eastman School of Music, also receiving an honorary doctoral degree where he had already earned a doctorate as a student over half a century earlier. Later that month he received the prestigious Aaron Copland Award from ASCAP. Lyric for Strings originated as the second movement of Walker’s String Quartet No. 1, written in 1946 after he graduated from Curtis and dedicated to his grandmother, who had recently died. Under the title Lament, the piece received its premiere that year on a radio concert of Curtis’s student orchestra conducted by Seymour Lipkin. The official premiere took place the following year at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., by the National Gallery Orchestra conducted by Richard Bales. Retitled at the request of the publisher, Lyric for Strings became one of the most frequently performed pieces by a living American composer. The piece’s origin as a slow movement in a string quartet and its poignant strains tinged with Romanticism bring to mind Barber’s famous Adagio for Strings and the Curtis connection of both composers. Walker’s Lyric for Strings, however, stands beautifully on its own. Falling motives and sustained tones set a mournful mood at the outset. The motion increases with contrapuntal lines weaving their way over a sustained pedal tone until gentle chordal iterations briefly arrest the flow. The resumption of the entwined lyrical lines eventually comes to an impassioned peak, now with low, jabbing chordal interjections of utter anguish. As the passage ebbs and quiet chords sound again, the gentle earlier flow resumes. The piece concludes somberly yet with a sense of peace. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904) String Quartet No. 12 in F major, B. 179, op. 96, “American” November 20, 2016: Frank Huang, concertmaster; Sheryl Staples, principal associate concertmaster; Cynthia Phelps, viola; Carter Brey; cello Beginning in the fall of 1892 Dvořák served as artistic director and professor of composition at the National Conservatory of Music in America (in New York City) at the urging of the institution’s president, Jeannette Thurber, who offered him twenty-five times the amount he was being paid at the Prague Conservatory. His life in the U.S. was hectic with teaching, public appearances, and engagements as a guest conductor, so he happily accepted an invitation to spend the summer of 1893 relaxing in a small farming community (300 residents) of Czech immigrants in Spillville, Iowa. Overjoyed to be reunited with four of his children who had just arrived from Czechoslovakia with their aunt and a maid, Dvořák traveled to Spillville by train in a party that also included his wife, his two oldest children, and his secretary Josef Jan Kovařík who had grown up there. His delight at being in a rural setting among his countrymen immediately erupted in the composition of his American Quartet, which he sketched in only three days, June 8–10. At the end of the sketch he wrote: “Thanks to the Lord God, I am satisfied, it went quickly. Completed June 10, 1893.” Polishing the score occupied him until June 23, and members of the Kovařík family assisted in trying out the Quartet with the composer himself making his way through the first violin part. The Kneisel Quartet gave the premiere in Boston on New Year’s Day 1894 and in New York on January 12. By far the most popular of Dvořák’s fourteen quartets, the American reflects his aim “to write something really melodious and simple.” As several scholars have pointed out, however, his effortless-sounding result masks remarkable unifying and thematic procedures. The first, second, and fourth movements all begin with an accompanimental backdrop before the main thematic material emerges. The first movement’s viola solo rising confidently over bass pedal and upper-string shimmer specifically brings to mind the opening of another famous Czech string quartet, Smetana’s “From My Life,” which Dvořák knew well. Dvořák chose the “pastoral” key of F major for his work, in which pedals or drones and permeating pentatonic themes (based on five “white-key” notes, F, G, A, C, D) help transmit a rural, “simple” flavor. We should note, too, that these traits relate to American, Slavic, and many other folk traditions. Just one example, however, shows the kind of sophistication at work: the lovely pentatonic melody in the violin that closes the exposition begets the related but altered expressive theme for the cello just after the start of the recapitulation. Many commentators have singled out the nostalgic Lento as the crowning movement of the Quartet, and Dvořák scholar Michael Beckerman has drawn attention to the Schubertian quality of its endless melody. Unfolding in a broad arch that comes to one of chamber music’s most exquisite climaxes, the movement relies primarily on the simple texture of the violin or cello carrying the melody with constant undulating support from the other instruments. Occasionally the second violin joins the first in a melodic role, as at the poignant climax. The final keening of the main theme by the cello against simple repeated chords rather than the former busy accompaniment lends an air of tragedy. Dvořák bases his entire scherzo on the same theme, with a variant serving as the contrasting section, which appears twice. Kovařík suggested that the quiet high violin tune that enters shortly after the opening was inspired by a bird call Dvořák heard outside his home in Spillville. Though the exact species of bird has never been determined beyond question, the most likely candidate is the scarlet tanager. The composer offsets the cheerful main theme of the rondo finale with episodes of more reflective quality. Toward the center, one of these quieter passages suggested to Dvořák scholar John Clapham an occasion when the composer enchanted the St. Wenceslas congregation of Spillville by spontaneously playing the organ during their typically music-less morning mass. The ebullient high spirits cannot be suppressed for long and the movement ends with a plethora of affirmative phrases. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

PIERRE LAPOINTE, VIOLA Pierre Lapointe is the violist of the Escher String Quartet and founded the group in 2005 with violinist Adam Barnett-Hart, violinist Wu Jie, and cellist Andrew Janss. The Escher Quartet was a member of Chamber Music Society Two from 2006 to 2009 and continues to perform extensively in the United States and all over the world. In 2012 he completed a thesis on Zemlinsky’s Second Quartet to earn a doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music and finished almost simultaneously a recording project of all four Zemlinsky string quartets on the Naxos label. Before devoting himself entirely to the viola, he played the violin and studied composition. In 2002 he performed his first string quartet to great acclaim on the show Young Artists of CBC Radio in Canada. He also received a prize in 2004 from the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec for his work at the Gatineau Music Conservatory and was granted a gold medal by the University of Ottawa in 2000 for his undergraduate studies in composition and violin performance. His main teachers were Yaëla Hertz Berkson, Calvin Sieb, and Lawrence Dutton. Since 2015 Mr. Lapointe has been teaching chamber music at the Southern Methodist University of Dallas.

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) Suite Italienne December 15, 2019: Benjamin Beilman, violin; Andrew Tyson, piano The ballet Pulcinella, from which the Suite italienne was drawn, was Stravinsky’s first Neoclassic—or rather “neo-Baroque”—composition. He had been approached by impresario Sergei Diaghilev in 1919 about writing an entirely different kind of ballet than the dramatically innovative Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and Rite of Spring (1913). Diaghilev had in mind the recent success of Vincenzo Tommasini’s The Good-humored Ladies, based on harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, and asked Stravinsky to consider works by another eighteenth-century Italian, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Stravinsky thought Diaghilev had gone mad, but agreed to look at his selections. “I looked and I fell in love,” Stravinsky later recalled. Scholars have more recently questions Pergolesi’s authorship of some of these pieces, but they nevertheless provided a turning point for Stravinsky. “Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late works became possible,” he wrote in Dialogues and a Diary. Diaghilev’s conception called for the dancers to take on the roles of eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte characters, and Stravinsky came up with twenty numbers to fit Diaghilev’s scenario. Retaining most of the original melodies and bass lines from the “Pergolesi” selections, Stravinsky provided more pungent harmonies, ostinato patterns, and slightly uneven phrase lengths. His original score called for an eighteenth-century-sized orchestra with concertino and ripieno parts, as in a concerto grosso, and three vocalists singing from the pit. Alarming differences of opinion among Diaghilev, Picasso (scenery and costume designer), Massine (choreographer and lead dancer), and the composer threatened the production, but the result, first performed at the Paris Opera House on May 15, 1920, apparently satisfied all those involved. An overwhelming popular success, Pulcinella nevertheless elicited criticism of Stravinsky’s new style as pastiche, too simple, and worst of all, a renunciation of his Russian heritage. History has proved otherwise. Like most worthwhile ballet music, Pulcinella also became a concert-hall favorite in many different arrangements: an eleven-movement orchestral suite (c. 1922); a five-movement version entitled Suite for violin and piano, after themes, fragments, and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi (1925) for violinist Paul Kochánski; the five-movement Suite italienne for cello and piano (1932), arranged with the help of cellist Gregor Piatigorsky; and the present six-movement Suite italienne for violin and piano (1932) in collaboration with violinist Samuel Dushkin, for whom Stravinsky also wrote the Violin Concerto. The violin version of the Suite italienne contains the mock pompous Introduzione, which served as Pulcinella’s overture (originally the first movement of a trio sonata); the charming, slightly melancholy Serenata, a tenor solo in the ballet (based on a tenor aria in the opera Il flaminio, 1735); and the lively Tarantella (originally the third movement of a trio sonata). The Gavotta con due variazioni follows (originally from the first set of Eight Lessons for the Harpsichord). The fifth movement, Scherzino, absent from the 1925 violin suite, was a presto tenor solo in Pulcinella (originally from the Overture to Act III of Lo frate ’nnamorato, 1732). The final movement contains both a stylized minuet and a brilliant finale (originally a canzona from Lo frate ’nnamorato and the third movement of another trio sonata, respectively). © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

EMANUEL AX, PIANO Born in modern day Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Additionally, he attended Columbia University where he majored in French. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. Always a committed exponent of contemporary composers with works written for him by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, and Melinda Wagner already in his repertoire, the 2016/2017 season will feature two newly commissioned works. With the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert, January will bring the world premiere of HK Gruber’s Piano Concerto followed in March by the European premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle. In recitals throughout the season his program will include works by Schubert and Chopin partnered with “Impromptus (2015-2016) ” by Samuel Adams commissioned by Music Accord and inspired by Schubert. His ongoing relationship with the Boston Symphony will include visits with them to Carnegie Hall, Montreal, and Toronto; with the Cleveland Orchestra, Mr. Ax will appear as the featured artist for their Gala opening concert of the season. As a regular visitor he will return to the orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Toronto, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Detroit. A Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987, recent releases include Mendelssohn Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss’ Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. In 2015, Deutsche Grammophon released a duo recording with Mr. Perlman of Sonatas by Faure and Strauss which the two artists presented on tour during the 2015/2016 season. Mr. Ax has received Grammy® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. His other recordings include the concertos of Liszt and Schoenberg, three solo Brahms albums, an album of tangos by Astor Piazzolla, and the premiere recording of John Adams’ Century Rolls with the Cleveland Orchestra for Nonesuch. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax also contributed to an International Emmy® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th century music/Piano). A frequent and committed partner for chamber music, he has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Mr. Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern. Mr. Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children together, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities. For more information about Mr. Ax’s career, please visit www.EmanuelAx.com .

LYSANDER PIANO TRIO Itamar Zorman, Violin
 Michael Katz, Cello
 Liza Stepanova, Piano The Lysander Piano Trio has been praised by The Strad for its “incredible ensemble, passionate playing, articulate and imaginative ideas and wide palette of colors” and by The Washington Post for “an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness” and “vivid engagement carried by soaring, ripely Romantic playing.” The group has developed a reputation for exciting programming, finding creative ways to connect well-known masterworks with pieces by lesser-known and underrepresented composers, discovering common threads across cultures and times. The Trio’s debut recording After A Dream (CAG Records) was acclaimed by The New York Times for its “polished and spirited interpretations.” Its most recent album, Mirrors, featuring world-premiere recordings of six works the ensemble has commissioned or premiered, was released in early 2021 by First Hand Records . In the 2023-24 season, the Trio performs at series around the US, Canada, and Israel including their debuts at Parlance Chamber Concerts, Feldman Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg, Northeast Kingdom Classical Series, Blue Hill Concert Association, University of Idaho's Auditorium Chamber Music Series, Nelson Overture Concerts Society, Kelowna Chamber Concert Association, and Israel's Keshet Eilon. In the spring of 2023, the Lysander "brought the house down" (Dumbarton Concerts) with its new tango-infused collaboration with Argentine bandoneon player and composer JP Jofre and looks forward to continuing the collaboration in upcoming seasons. Highlights of the past few seasons include a return engagement at Atlanta’s premier chamber music series at Spivey Hall, a multi-concert residency with Chamber Music Tulsa, a weeklong series of performances and educational activities at New Orleans’s Crescent City Chamber Music Festival, and appearances with Massachusetts’ Valley Classical Concerts, Chamber Music Raleigh, Lee University's Presidential Concert Series, Concerts International Memphis, Sanibel Music Festival, Florida Keys Concert Association, and Shelter Island Friends of Music, among others. In addition, the ensemble performed in concerts and residencies across the United States as a featured touring group of Allied Concert Services. The Lysander Trio also performed abroad in recent seasons, notably at Calgary Pro Musica in Canada, Pro Musica San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, and a tour of Israel. The Lysander Piano Trio has spent over a decade performing around the US with appearances at notable venues such as the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, Los Angeles’ Da Camera Society, San Francisco’s Music at Kohl Mansion, West Palm Beach's Kravis Center and Norton Museum of Art, Juneau Jazz and Classics, and notable college venues including Middlebury College, Clemson University, Purdue University’s Convocations Series, and University of Illinois’ Krannert Center. Summer and festival appearances include the Bard Music Festival, Cooperstown Summer Music Festival, Copenhagen Summer Festival, The Chautauqua Institution, Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts, and a critically acclaimed recital at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among special projects, the Trio recently collaborated with clarinetist Charles Neidich in a unique program presented by the Chamber Music Society of Philadelphia and Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music. Orchestral engagements include Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, University of Wyoming Symphony Orchestra and Greenwich Village Orchestra in New York City. The Lysander Piano Trio frequently performs in New York City, where the ensemble first launched in the 2010-11 season. The New York Times lauded the ensemble’s Weill Recital Hall debut at Carnegie Hall as “…rich sound and nuanced musicianship… resulting in a finely hued collaboration among the three musicians.” Other notable New York dates are Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and David Rubinstein Atrium, Schneider Concerts Chamber Music Series at the New School, National Sawdust, Merkin Concert Hall, and the Mostly Mozart Festival’s 50th Anniversary season at David Geffen Hall. The Trio has a long-standing commitment to working with living composers and building a new repertoire for the piano trio. The ensemble’s commissions include Gilad Cohen’s Around the Cauldron (2017), co-commissioned by Concert Artists Guild and premiered at Weill Recital Hall; Ghostwritten Variations , by Venezuelan-American composer Reinaldo Moya; Jakub Ciupinski’s The Black Mirror ; and Four Movements Inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” penned by four pre-teen composers of ComposerCraft from NYC’s Kaufman Music Center and premiered at Merkin Concert Hall in 2014. Lysander members also premiered Jennifer Higdon’s Love Sweet for soprano and piano trio, which received its world-premiere recording together with acclaimed soprano Sarah Shafer on the group’s 2021 release, Mirrors . Beyond its praise from Musical America for being “strikingly inventive…meticulous” and from The Strad for its “evocative moments,” Gramophone celebrated Mirrors by noting that “all six of this release’s compositions benefit from the Lysander Trio’s finely honed ensemble values and well-characterised solo contributions.” The Lysander Piano Trio, whose name is inspired by the character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream , was formed at The Juilliard School. The Trio studied with Ronald Copes of the Juilliard String Quartet, the late Joseph Kalichstein and Seymour Lipkin, and had a memorable masterclass with Alfred Brendel. Early in their career, Lysander became a standout at competitions, with top honors at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the 2011 Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition (Grand Prize), the 2011 J. C. Arriaga Chamber Music Competition (First Prize), and the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition.